The story
The Gonzaga family ruled Mantua for close to four centuries, and their palace grew with them into one of the largest in Italy, almost a city within the city, with some 500 rooms, courtyards and gardens set against the lakes that ring the town.
The room everyone climbs the tower for is a small one. In a corner chamber overlooking the water, Andrea Mantegna spent about nine years, finishing around 1474, painting the walls and ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi for Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, a title the family held until Mantua was raised to a duchy in 1530. He filled them with the marquis's own family and court, and in the middle of the ceiling opened a painted eye to the sky, with figures and a peacock leaning over a balustrade above your head, often called the first true trompe l'oeil in painting.
Elsewhere the palace holds rediscovered fragments of an Arthurian fresco cycle by Pisanello, left unfinished in the 15th century.
